Picture Palace, Paul Theroux
Picture Palace, Paul Theroux
List: $32.99 | Sale: $23.10
Club: $16.49

Picture Palace
A Novel

Author: Paul Theroux

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Unabridged: 13 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Mariner Books

Published: 07/22/2025


Synopsis

“Never a dull moment . . . Vivid and deft.” — New York Review of Books

Maude Pratt is a legend, a photographer famous for her cutting-edge techniques and uncanny ability to strip away the masks of the world’s most recognizable celebrities and luminaries. Now in her seventies, Maude has been in the public eye since the 1920s, and her unparalleled portfolio includes intimate portraits of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Picasso. While Maude possesses a singular capability to expose the inner lives of her subjects, she is obsessive about protecting her own, hiding her deepest secret in the “picture palace” of her memory. But when a young archivist comes to stay in Maude’s Cape Cod home and begins sorting through her fifty years of work, Maude is forced to face her past and come to terms, at last, with the tragedies she’s buried.

“A breathtaking tale . . . Intangibly, intricately brilliant.” — Telegraph (UK)

About Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include Burma Sahib, The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, On the Plain of Snakes, and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bruce on October 23, 2022

This elegant novel may be Theroux's best novel and even his best book. It is my favorite of his novels--untypical, risk-taking, deeply felt, written with passion and humor, as well as with his familiar ability to make his world vivid and dramatic. This story of a pioneering woman photographer in the......more

Goodreads review by Vancolondon on May 29, 2025

Interesting idea, some great writing in places… that’s the positive!......more

Goodreads review by Sam on June 11, 2020

Read this book solely because it is so rare for me to have a physical copy of anything that if i ever have an actual book, I NEED to read it. Never have i powered through the pages of a book out of pure spite for the main character as much as this one. For most of the book I found maude completely u......more

Goodreads review by Pascale on February 20, 2021

Frankly I wonder why I persevered with this book when I've found it difficult to stick to anything lately. I guess it has to do with my partiality for unreliable narrators (as well as a strong memory of "Kowloon Tong"). This is the story of a fictional pioneer of photography, Maude Pratt, who is for......more

Goodreads review by Katharine on January 17, 2019

I loved the wit in this novel.......more